Having convinced his turbulent brain that it was quite possible for him
to write such a letter as this, he flung himself miserably back on his
hard cot again and realized that he did not want to write it. That it
would be almost an insult to the girl, who even if she had been
patronizing him, had done it with a kind intent, and after all it was not
her fault that he was a fool. She had a right to marry whom she would.
Certainly he never expected her to marry him. Only he had to own to
himself that he wanted those things she had offered. He wanted to touch
something she had worked upon, and feel that it belonged to him. He
wanted to keep this much of human friendship for himself. Even if she was
going to marry another man, she had always been his ideal of a beautiful,
lovable woman, and as such she should stay his, even if she married a
dozen enemy officers!
It was then he began to see that the thing that was really making him
miserable was that she was giving her sweet young life to such a rotten
little mean-natured man as Wainwright. That was the real pain. If some
fine noble man like--well--like Captain La Rue, only younger, of course,
should come along he would be glad for her. But this excuse for a man!
Oh, it was outrageous! How could she be so deceived? and yet, of course,
women knew very little of men. They had no standards by which to judge
them. They had no opportunity to see them except in plain sight of those
they wished to please. One could not expect them to have discernment in
selecting their friends. But what a pity! Things were all wrong! There
ought to be some way to educate a woman so that she would realize the
dangers all about her and be somewhat protected. It was worse for Ruth
Macdonald because she had no men in her family who could protect her. Her
old grandfather was the only near living male relative and he was a
hopeless invalid, almost entirely confined to the house. What could he
know of the young men who came to court his granddaughter? What did he
remember of the ways of men, having been so many years shut away from
their haunts?
The corporal tossed on his hard cot and sighed like a furnace. There
ought to be some one to protect her. Someone ought to make her understand
what kind of a fellow Wainwright was! She had called him her knight, and
a knight's business was to protect, yet what could he do? He could not go
to her and tell her that the man she was going to marry was rotten and
utterly without moral principle. He could not even send some one else to
warn her. Who could he send? His mother? No, his mother would feel shy
and afraid of a girl like that. She had always lived a quiet life. He
doubted if she would understand herself how utterly unfit a mate
Wainwright was for a good pure girl. And there was no one else in the
world that he could send. Besides, if she loved the man, and
incomprehensible as it seemed, she must love him or why should she marry
him?--if she loved him she would not believe an angel from heaven against
him. Women were that way; that is, if they were good women, like Ruth.
Oh, to think of her tied up to that--_beast!_ He could think of no other
word. In his agony he rolled on his face and groaned aloud.
"Oh God!" his soul cried out, "why do such things have to be? If there
really is a God why does He let such awful things happen to a pure good
girl? The same old bitter question that had troubled the hard young days
of his own life. Could there be a God who cared when bitterness was in so
many cups? Why had God let the war come?"
Sometime in the night the tumult in his brain and heart subsided and he
fell into a profound sleep. The next thing he knew the kindly roughness
of his comrades wakened him with shakes and wet sponges flying through
the air, and he opened his consciousness to the world again and heard the
bugle blowing for roll call. Another day had dawned grayly and he must
get up. They set him on his feet, and bantered him into action, and he
responded with his usual wit that put them all in howls of laughter, but
as he stumbled into place in the line in the five o'clock dawning he
realized that a heavy weight was on his heart which he tried to throw
off. What did it matter what Ruth Macdonald did with her life? She was
nothing to him, never had been and never could be. If only he had not
written that letter all would now be as it always had been. If only she
had not written her letter! Or no! He put his hand to his breast pocket
with a quick movement of protection. Somehow he was not yet ready to
relinquish that one taste of bright girl friendliness, even though it had
brought a stab in its wake.
He was glad when the orders came for him and five other fellows to tramp
across the camp to the gas school and go through two solid hours of
instruction ending with a practical illustration of the gas mask and a
good dose of gas. It helped to put his mind on the great business of war
which was to be his only business now until it or he were ended. He set
his lips grimly and went about his work vigorously. What did it matter,
anyway, what she thought of him? He need never answer another letter,
even if she wrote. He need not accept the package from the post office.
He could let them send it back--refuse it and let them send it back, that
was what he could do! Then she might think what she liked. Perhaps she
would suppose him already gone to France. Anyhow, he would forget her! It
was the only sensible thing to do.
Meanwhile the letter had flown on its way with more than ordinary
swiftness, as if it had known that a force was seeking to bring it back
again. The Y.M.C.A. man was carried at high speed in an automobile to the
nearest station to the camp, and arrived in time to catch the Baltimore
train just stopping. In the Baltimore station he went to mail the letter
just as the letter gatherer arrived with his keys to open the box. So the
letter lost no time but was sorted and started northward before midnight,
and by some happy chance arrived at its destination in time to be laid by
Ruth Macdonald's plate at lunch time the next day.
Some quick sense must have warned Ruth, for she gathered her mail up and
slipped it unobtrusively into the pocket of her skirt before it could be
noticed. Dottie Wetherill had come home with her for lunch and the bright
red Y.M.C.A. triangle on the envelope was so conspicuous. Dottie was
crazy over soldiers and all things military. She would be sure to exclaim
and ask questions. She was one of those people who always found out
everything about you that you did not keep under absolute lock and key.
Every day since she had written her letter to Cameron Ruth had watched
for an answer, her cheeks glowing sometimes with the least bit of
mortification that she should have written at all to have received this
rebuff. Had he, after all, misunderstood her? Or had the letter gone
astray, or the man gone to the front? She had almost given up expecting
an answer now after so many weeks, and the nice warm olive-drab sweater
and neatly knitted socks with extra long legs and bright lines of color
at the top, with the wristlets and muffler lay wrapped in tissue paper at
the very bottom of a drawer in the chiffonier where she would seldom see
it and where no one else would ever find it and question her. Probably by
and by when the colored draftees were sent away she would get them out
and carry them down to the headquarters to be given to some needy man.
She felt humiliated and was beginning to tell herself that it was all her
own fault and a good lesson for her. She had even decided not to go and
see John Cameron's mother again lest that, too, might be misunderstood.
It seemed that the frank true instincts of her own heart had been wrong,
and she was getting what she justly deserved for departing from Aunt
Rhoda's strictly conventional code.
Nevertheless, the letter in her pocket which she had not been able to
look at carefully enough to be sure if she knew the writing, crackled and
rustled and set her heart beating excitedly, and her mind to wondering
what it might be. She answered Dottie Wetherill's chatter with distraught
monosyllables and absent smiles, hoping that Dottie would feel it
necessary to go home soon after lunch.
But it presently became plain that Dottie had no intention of going home
soon; that she had come for a purpose and that she was plying all her
arts to accomplish it. Ruth presently roused from her reverie to realize
this and set herself to give Dottie as little satisfaction as possible
out of her task. It was evident that she had been sent to discover the
exact standing and relation in which Ruth held Lieutenant Harry
Wainwright. Ruth strongly suspected that Dottie's brother Bob had been
the instigator of the mission, and she had no intention of giving him the
information.
So Ruth's smiles came out and the inscrutable twinkle grew in her lovely
eyes. Dottie chattered on sentence after sentence, paragraph after
paragraph, theme after theme, always rounding up at the end with some
perfectly obvious leading question. Ruth answered in all apparent
innocence and sincerity, yet with an utterly different turn of the
conversation from what had been expected, and with an indifference that
was hopelessly baffling unless the young ambassador asked a point blank
question, which she hardly dared to do of Ruth Macdonald without more
encouragement. And so at last a long two hours dragged thus away, and
finally Dottie Wetherill at the end of her small string, and at a loss
for more themes on which to trot around again to the main idea,
reluctantly accepted her defeat and took herself away, leaving Ruth to
her long delayed letter.